1:00 PM to 2:30 PM

Currently in Latin America, there are no nuclear weapons. In 1967, the Treaty of Tlatelolco was created and signed by Latin America and the Caribbean. This treaty prohibits the possession of nuclear weapons of any kind, making Latin America a non-nuclear weapon state. The research question I will be addressing is: Even though there are no nuclear weapons in Latin America, does nuclearism play a role in shaping its culture? As a native Spanish speaker, I am able to use my knowledge of the culture by using methods to analyze popular music, language and literature regarding nuclear weapons. I studied the lyrical and visual aspect of music to look for themes of the naturalization of nuclear weapons, as well as finding how language plays a role in its normalization. I analyzed literature in order to find commonality of nuclear cultures between nations that possess nuclear weapons and those that do not. My initial findings show that there is a strong presence of a nuclear culture existing in Latin America despite the fact that the region does not own nuclear weapons. Research also shows that nuclear culture is normalized through important themes such as gender and sexuality. Its normalization is often not obvious and is a part of daily life. These results were unexpected because I hypothesized for a nuclear culture to be nonexistent in a region that prohibits nuclear weapons. It is important to conduct further research on how nuclear weapons affect regions that are non-nuclear weapon states because it would create a broader understanding of the effects that nuclear weapons have on everyone and how it is a global issue that needs to be addressed.

Secondary nucleotide messengers are used by all domains of life to sense and respond to the changes in their environment. In bacteria these secondary nucleotide messengers play a role in regulating several signaling pathways such as cell wall homeostasis, motility, and the expression of virulence genes. The nucleotide cyclic di- 3, 5’ adenosine monophosphate (c-di-AMP) was recently added to the list of secondary nucleotides. C-di-AMP is found in many bacteria such as S. aureus, S. pneumoniae, B. subtilis, and L. monocytogenes (Lm). C-di-AMP has been best characterized in Lm, a well-studied intracellular pathogen. Lm has adapted to survive and replicate in the host cell cytosol by evading host cell defenses through use of key virulence factors. In Lm, synthesis of c-di-AMP is catalyzed by the diadenylate cyclase dacA and degradation is coordinated by the phosphodiesterases, pdeA and pgpH. Studies using Lm mutants that lack both pdeA and pgpH contain abnormal c-di-AMP levels that cause growth and virulence defects of about four logs compared to wild type Lm. This highlights the importance of c-di-AMP regulation for bacterial virulence and growth, but we still know very little about c-di-AMP regulation and toxicity. Our goal is to further understand the toxicity of high levels of c-di-AMP during bacterial infection. We aim to create a transposon library in the double phosphodiesterase KO (ΔΔ Pde) background to identify suppressor mutations. Previous approaches to analyzing suppressor mutations in the ΔΔ Pde strain has not been thorough or cannot be utilized in vivo. Therefore, we have created an amenable phosphodiesterase mutant that knocks out the phosphodiesterases in Lm (pdeA and pgpH) to grow in vivo successfully to investigate c-di-AMP regulation. Understanding the regulation of c-di-AMP could result in targets for novel treatments against Lm and allow for ways to investigate regulation methods of c-di-AMP in other organisms.

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